Il8 THE BRIDGE OF THE GODS.
ble foes. Looking toward the land of the Shoshones, he denounced them with the utmost fury, dared them to face him, scorned them because they did not appear, and ended by shaking his tomahawk in their direction, amid the applause of his comrades.
Cecil passed on and reached the outer limit of the camp. There, amid some large bowlders, he almost stumbled on a band of Indians engaged in some grisly ceremony. He saw them, however, in time to escape observation and screen himself behind one of the rocks.
One of the Indians held a rattlesnake pinned to the ground with a forked stick. Another held out a piece of liver to the snake and was provoking him to bite it. Again and again the snake, quivering with fury and rattling savagely, plunged his fangs into the liver. Several Indians stood looking on, with arrows in their hands. At length, when the meat was thor oughly impregnated with the virus, the snake was released and allowed to crawl away. Then they all dipped the points of their arrows in the poisoned liver, 1 carefully marking the shaft of each in order to distinguish it from those not poisoned. None of them saw Cecil, and he left without being discovered.
Why did they wish to go to the council with poisoned arrows?
Further on, among the rocks and remote from the camp, he saw a great light and heard a loud hallooing. He went cautiously toward it. He found a large fire in an open space, and perhaps thirty savages, stripped
l See Bancroft s Native Races, article " Columbians." A bunch of arrows so poisoned is in the Museum of the Oregon State University at Eugene.
